The 6 Essential Strategies- 3 Types of Pricing Strategies - Which is Right for Your Practice?
Don’t forget to learn about the 6 Essential Strategies and about our Discovery Form.
Hello everybody. I'm Dr. Dennis Perman from The Masters Circle Global, and welcome to our next installment of the 6 Essential Strategies Podcast.
If you remember, the 6 Essential Strategies is a series of concepts that helps you to understand exactly what you need to do to have the practice you really want.
You need to find Friction and eliminate it. You need to have the correct Pricing and Fee policies. You need to have someone functioning as a Chief Operating Officer to oversee the operations of your practice, you need to participate in Passion Branding, bringing emotion to your brand so that people feel connected to it and to you and to chiropractic.
You need to become a Master of Persuasion so that the things that you say land and help people to make good decisions.
And finally, you need to be able to identify the Decision Maker and to get inside the head of the decision maker so that you can create the kind of impact that you really want.
Now, this particular podcast is dedicated toward Pricing, and pricing is an area of practice that many doctors are confused about.
I'm going to show you some Discovery Forms so that you can see what some of the thinking is of some of your colleagues. But there's a couple of basic concepts I want you to understand before we begin.
First, there are three types of pricing.
There's cost based pricing, which means that you analyze your costs and you add a profit, and that becomes your price. Or there's market based pricing where you evaluate the different kinds of competitors in your marketplace, and you decide based on your interpretation of what they're doing, what you should be charging.
The third type and the preferred type of pricing is values-based pricing. In other words, you match your price to the value that the patient perceives and also the value that you place on your work. So values-based pricing is the optimal kind of pricing if you can get there.
Now, let's take a look at what some of the doctors in our profession are doing so that we can understand what you might be doing differently in order to make it better.
Now this is a Discovery Form. It's the 6 Essential Strategies Discovery Form. If you want to learn about the 6 Essential Strategies, then all you need to do is click on the link in the description below and you'll be able to get at the website, the landing page that helps you to understand these 6 Essential Strategies.
If you want to fill out a Discovery Form, you'll also find a link in the description below so that you can fill out a Discovery Form and analyze yourself. This is a self Discovery Form as well as a Discovery Form so that you can understand exactly where your energies are currently being placed and where you can place them differently in order to make things better.
So let's take a look at the pricing section of this particular doctor's Discovery form. So this doctor says that he or she does not base fees on the competition? Good. Do you tend to give your services a way or reduce your fees to attract patients? No. Do you offer backend services and products to create more income?
Yes. Have you raised your fees in the last six months? Yes. This doctor's doing fantastic. Do you feel well compensated for your service? And do your patients perceive your fees to be fair and reasonable? Yes.
But look at this. If you could have any fee policy you wanted, would it be different from what you currently charge? And the doctor says, yes.
Now wait a minute. This doctor's not basing the price on the competition, not giving services away, chooses which backend services and products to offer and how much to charge for them, has indeed raised fee in the last six months and feels well compensated. If you could have any fee policy you wanted, would it be different when you're currently charged? Yes.
Then go ahead and change it, because this doctor seems to have a pretty good grip on what he or she believes is appropriate in his or her marketplace. Go ahead and change the fee. It's okay.
Now let's take a look at another example. This doctor, do you base your fees on your competition? No. So that's good.
Do you intend to give your services a way or reduce fees to attract patients? Yes. Do you offer any backend services? Yes. Have you raised your fees? Yes. Do you feel well compensated? Yes. And if you could have any fee policy you wanted, would it be different when you currently charge? No. So this doctor, even though he or she's giving away services to and reducing fees to attract patients, still feels that this is the fee policy that's a good fit, and therefore there is a congruency here.
Now remember, there aren't any right or wrong answers on pricing, but it does have to be a good match between what you believe you are worth and what you're currently charging.
Let's look at another example. So this doctor, Do you base your fees on the competition? Yes. Do you tend to give away your services?
Yes. Are you offering any backend services? No. Have you raised your fees? Yes. Do you feel well compensated? Yes. But look at this. If you could have any fee policy you wanted, would it be different from what you currently charge? No. What you base your fees on the competition? You give your services away. Yes, you feel well compensated, but you're not offering any backend services and you think that this is fine.
It's the best you can do. This is a job for somebody who has some perspective on what it's like in the marketplace to offer some advice to see about making this a better situation.
Let's look at another. So this doctor does base his or her fees on the competition and does give services away.
Does offer backend services, has not raised fees, feels well compensated, but if they could have any fee policy they wanted, would it be different? Yes. Go ahead and change it if you haven't raised your fees in the last six months. Believe me. If you look around at what the cost at the gas pump, what the cost in restaurants, how about the grocery store?
Everybody's raised their fees in the last six months. It's perfectly acceptable for you to do the same if you choose to do that.
Let's look at just one more. Base fees on competition? No! Giveaway services? No. Offer backend services? Yes. Raise fees in the last six months? No. Do you feel well compensated for your services?
And do your patients perceive your fees to be fair and reasonable? No. So if you could have any fee policy you wanted, would it be different from what you currently charge? Yes. Then what about raising your fees? You haven't raised them in six months if you don't feel well compensated, how about raising your fee?
And it doesn't have to be only your fee on your office visit. You have a variety of services that you offer, and it's perfectly acceptable if your expenses are going up, and if every place you go, they're raising their fees as well. There's no reason on earth that you couldn't raise your fees and be completely justified in doing so.
Each doctor has the responsibility to figure out exactly what is most appropriate so that every doctor gets the very best deal for the patient and also for the doctor. Remember, you are in business and there's nothing wrong with you charging an appropriate fee for the services that you offer.
Now, don't gouge anybody, and you have to be able to say it with a straight face. But from looking around at what other doctors are answering in these questions, why don't you do the Discovery Form yourself and see how your answers measure up. It's very revealing and you can discover, (that's why it's called a discovery form), you can discover where your incongruencies are, where your inconsistencies are, and you can begin to fix them. Everybody has the opportunity to be able to learn about these concepts, these 6 Essential Strategies, and to be able to troubleshoot, to find out where am I going astray?
Where am I really strong? Where am I in the middle?
In order for you to really understand this, you wanna make sure to explore it. Using this terminology and understanding these concepts, if you do this, there's an excellent likelihood that you will be able to create the practice that you really want.
So this is Dr. Dennis Perman, signing off for The 6 Essential Strategies Podcast. Please click on the links underneath and learn what you need to know in order to create the practice that you really want.
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